Latest News from Mark Skilton

Four Key Reasons to Include Cloud Computing in Your Business Strategy

Mon, 24 Oct 2011 14:29:11 EDT

The issue of success or failure in moving your company data, IT storage, servers or software to the cloud is often driven by technical issues, including performance, bandwidth, security and total-cost-of-ownership (TCO) considerations. While many of these factors are key criteria for selecting cloud solutions, they usually don’t align with the bigger picture that C-level executives must consider when adding new IT solutions.

New Business Monetization Network Models – Google+ vs Facebook

Mon, 25 Jul 2011 14:00:00 EDT

A number of interesting issues have come to light in the recent announcement of Google+ intention to move into social networking in direct competition with Facebook. It may be that Google finally “gets it” with the idea of “circles” and “sparks” as a way of understanding social network segmentation that is superior to Facebook. Specifically the ability to segment different friendship groups into separate conversations is not just a grouping of relationship data but a fundamental “wakeup call” that this is how virtual communities actually work. It’s often been surprising how this social graph reconstruction (to build value from the graph) has gone missing from the mission statement of Facebook in their every population expanding “one size fits all” approach.

Cloud Computing Drives Need for Open Standards

Thu, 10 Feb 2011 09:55:00 EST

The new multiplicity-based world of cloud-enabled networks means you can augment yourself and your company's assets in ways that change the shape of your industry. I recently looked back at some significant papers that had influenced my thinking on cloud computing as part of a review on current strategic trends. In February 2009, a paper published at the University of California, Berkeley, “Above the Clouds: A Berkeley View of Cloud Computing," stands out as the first of many papers to drive out the issues around the promise of cloud computing and technology barriers to achieving secure elastic service.

How to Build ROI from Cloud Computing

Sun, 12 Dec 2010 01:30:00 EST

As the hot, new “trend of the moment” in technology, cloud computing is touted to be a transformative way to provide computing resources faster and more efficiently through shared infrastructures. Due to the considerable hype surrounding the Cloud, organizations considering cloud as an option will need to begin seeing that this new model does indeed offer improvements in cost, revenue and margins in order for them to gain buy-in from their executives to pursue the model. Because the lines of business and the IT departments in most organizations often speak different languages, it’s critical for IT departments that are considering cloud adoption to show how a cloud model will help their businesses realize a return on their investment (ROI). An initiative from The Open Group has developed a set of considerations for how to build and measure ROI from cloud computing during the early stages that also speaks to a business perspective. Clearly, these indicators will change as the technology matures, but by implementing ROI models as part of the planning process for cloud implementations, companies can begin to take advantage of the potential cloud computing offers right away – from both incremental improvements to disruptive transformation of business processes.